Age Differences and Age Changes in the Division of Labor by Sex: Reanalysis of White and Brinkerhoff

Abstract

In an article on the sexual division of labor among children, White and Brinkerhoff provide some important data on the which parents claim their children are performing. Much is now known about the division of labor by sex in adulthood (see Blood and Wolfe; Hedges and Barnett; Herbst) but data on the acquisition of attitudes and behavior concerning the allocation of tasks is rare. It is commonly accepted that the basic elements of an individual's gender identity are created by socialization during the first two or three years of life. translation of these basic gender orientations into mundane activities such as deciding who does what around the house is revealed by White and Brinkerhoff's survey data. In general, their data show that older children exhibit a greater degree of sex typing in household chores than do younger children. However, their interpretation of the data must be taken cautiously because of two analytic problems. first problem is one that researchers have been sensitized to because of the rise of gerontology as a specialization in the social sciences. White and Brinkerhoff summarize their paper with the statement, The consistent direct effect of Child's age on sex-typing, independent of family structure or background, suggests that the sex-linked assignment of children's chores is a powerful societal form which becomes more intense as the child matures (181). Unfortunately, the data in their study are crosssectional. They studied children from ages 2 through 17, by asking their parents what chores their children performed around the house, and outside the home for pay. They grouped the data into four age categories (2-5, 6-9, 10-13, and 14-17) and found a strong tendency for sex-typing to be stronger among the older groups than the younger groups. However, the only valid conclusion which can be made with cross-sectional data is that there are age differences in the degree of division of labor by sex. It is